A Three-Digit Score Could Dictate Your Place in Society

In 2015 Ant Financial was one of eight tech companies granted approval from the People’s Bank of China to develop their own private credit scoring platforms. Zhima Credit appeared in the Alipay app shortly after that. The service tracks your behavior on the app to arrive at a score between 350 and 950, and offers perks and rewards to those with good scores. Zhima Credit’s algorithm considers not only whether you repay your bills but also what you buy, what degrees you hold, and the scores of your friends.

1) One of the important things here is this is not just a credit score to determine whether or not you get credit, or what that loan payment will cost you. This is “social credit” and the idea is to shape your behavior. Is it acceptable to use data analytics to shape social behavior.

2) The move away from cash makes the move to “social credit” almost inevitable. How might you avoid this move, or not?